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Sunday 22 June 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Forsyth, Frederick
(1938-2025) UK author who gained fame with his first novel, The Day of the Jackal (1971), and whose books are generally political thrillers. The Shepherd (1975 chap), however, is a sentimental Timeslip or ghost fantasy in which a pilot on Christmas Eve 1957 is saved from crashing by a World War Two pilot in an antique bomber: pilot and plane had been shot down on the Christmas Eve of 1943. ...
Hedges, Sid G
(1897-1974) UK author, mostly of detective thrillers; of interest are The Channel Tunnel Mystery (1931), which does not actually incorporate the eponymous tunnel, and the Near Future Plague Panic (1934), in which criminals seeking vast sums of blackmail threaten to infect the entire world with the eponymous bacillus, creating a deadly Pandemic. [JC]
Davis, Russell
(1970- ) US author, editor and publisher in many genres whose pseudonyms include David Cian and Christopher Tracy; he has edited a number of anthologies, most in collaboration with Martin H Greenberg. In his sf novel Touchless (2002) the protagonist, whose dead wife is in Cryonic storage, is offered the choice (reminiscent of an episode in ...
Radcliffe, Garnett
(1898-1971) UK author of occasional sf, who also wrote detective thrillers as by Stephen Travers; of sf interest is the title novella of The Return of the Ceteosaurus, and Other Tales (coll 1926), which pits a huge saurian (see Dinosaurs) against a Death Ray. The Great Orme Terror (1934) is a crime thriller whose Villains deploy murderous Robots. The ...
Beast of Yucca Flats, The
US film (1961; vt Atomic Monster: The Beast of Yucca Flats; possibly also released as Girl Madness). Cardoza-Francis Productions. Directed and written by Coleman Francis. Cast includes Lanell Cado, Tor Johnson, Jim Oliphant and Bing Stafford. 54 minutes. Black and white. / A young woman (Cado) drying herself after a shower (see Fan Service) is strangled. We then cut to the arrival of "noted Scientist" Joseph ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...